


Non Omnis Moriar

by mattador



Category: Bram Stoker - Dracula
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006, recipient:Koshkaphoenix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattador/pseuds/mattador





	Non Omnis Moriar

  


  
  
  
  
  


  
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## Non Omnis Moriar

 

Fandom: [Bram Stoker - Dracula](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Bram%20Stoker%20-%20Dracula)

 

Written for: Koshkaphoenix in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge

by [Mattador](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=28/nonomnis)

Thanks for a great beta job by virtuistic. The poem and title are from Horace's Odes:   
http://home.golden.net/~eloker/horace.htm

 

_From The Journal of Wilhelmina Harker_

 

6 November 1903, early morning.

 

Quincey woke me an hour ago, because a dream had badly frightened him. He is asleep again now, but indeed, sleep is the farthest thing from my mind. I will not sleep until the dawn comes again, if then, because I am certain that I will not feel safe until then.

 

God help me, I may never sleep easily again.

 

Jonathan has always believed in perfect trust between us, giving me his journals to read even when he believed their account to be madness. I do not think now that I am mad, but I keep this journal secret from Jonathan. I always have, and though I do feel guilty for it, I hope that he will never read what I have written here.

 

The dream that Quincey woke with tonight, I have dreamed once before, on the night that Quincey was born; six years ago to the very hour.

 

***

 

I am surrounded by darkness, winter cold, and the rich, dry smell of old earth. Like incense, the smell soothes me, the coarse-grained, pebbled feel of frozen soil beneath me. Outside, there is disturbance, there is movement; urgency. But here, there is endless time in which to contemplate. Here the world is quiet and distant.

 

As dreams often do, every slow second carries with it a sense of inevitability. There is no surprise, and no sense of uncertainty. All is happening, not as it _must_, but simply as it is.

 

The movement around me, the jostling roll of the cart's wheels and the swaying of its bed, ceases. They are here, then. The weak and envious who would, in their folly, destroy me. They come for me, they dare- but as there was no surprise, there is only a cold, still shadow of fury, bound within me by the frost.

 

I, though, I am unbound. Although this proud shell would be transfixed in even the ruddy, failing sunlight that remains, still I am more than my body, more than my destroyers, more than any man. There is a shuddering in me like the rattle of feathers, of dark wings unfurling, and then, like a cold-clouded breath, I push forth from my body and into the winter air.

 

These men, if such weak things can be worthy of the name- these insects who bring my death in their hands bring also my greatest treasure, my salvation. Now, as I fly arrowlike and invisible, there is real feeling within me, a warmth like the memory of wine.

 

There is more to the dream, of course, but even without the dream, I would know it all.

 

What remains, I remember.

 

***

_Later_

 

I have been reading my journals, in the hope that it would not be necessary to record more here, but of course I was not fully earnest in them. I did not understand, I did not even suspect, until the night Quincey was born, and so I wrote only what I knew to be the truth, clearly, for the sake of the record.

 

And, of course, because I knew that Jonathan would read the account. If it is Jonathan who reads this now, though I do not think that it will be- it was not to conceal any dark secrets that my journal was... careful; but for your sake, to keep you from knowing things that I thought could help no-one now, and would only harm by their telling.

 

As I wrote then, seven years ago, I was not afraid in that final clash of blades. I did not fear for Jonathan, or for Arthur, or for dear Doctor Van Helsing. I did not fear at all until I saw Quincey fall.

 

I did not fear, but neither did I write--truthfully--why.

 

At first, I only felt a swell of exultation, of heated feeling at this, the end of our sufferings. I did not think to question why, but I do remember it was no simple excitement- it was enough that my lips curled back from my teeth, eagerly, as though I were a beast. I was anticipating something- the final stroke, the last moment- but as Jonathan mounted in a leap to the back of the wagon and flung the casket down, I felt more.

 

There was a pressure in the air before me, as the front before a storm, a wind that wavered and buffeted all around me, a cyclone that enclosed the circle of holy wafers I stood in. It made no sound, nor was it true wind, stirring the snow- it was something more ethereal than that, and as I felt the frantic spiraling of it, I knew. It was... the creature that we were hunting, that mockery of a man that had fed upon me, had taken Lucy from us, and the quickening of my heart, the bestial elation, was not mine. At least, it did not come from within me, but pressed itself around me, like the false wind. It was his excitement, his need, his thirst, trying to find a home within me. It had been sure when it struck, but the power of the circle held it back. I felt his rage, quick and hot like the welling of blood, and looked through the space where his wraith broke itself on the holy circle as Jonathan tore the lid from his body's hiding place.

 

His knife struck, and Quincey's behind it, and in that moment my sense of the circle that imprisoned me was gone. I stepped forward, breath caught in my throat, not daring to believe we had truly defeated him, this dread thing that a body could not contain- and as his flesh fell away to be nothing more substantial than the soil it had rested on, I saw the look in his eyes, the satiety, the contentment. He died utterly without fear.

 

***

 

The joy and relief of the next year were almost unbearable- we mourned Mr. Morris, so great-hearted and generous, but our own sense of freedom, of new life, washed the grief away, all the more after I learned that I was carrying Jonathan's child. He doted, of course, and I did not protest that I was well when he insisted I stay abed while he made me breakfast, or spent hours ensconced in the library, reading me poetry.

 

It was one such night, a wild evening just into November, while Quincey kicked and turned within me, that I picked the first book I fancied off the shelf, an old leatherbound volume that simply read `Horace' in gold flaking letters down its spine. I began to read it aloud to myself, while Jonathan banked the fire.

 

"_ I have created a monument more lasting than bronze, and higher than the royal site of the pyramids, which neither harsh rains nor the wild North wind can erode, nor the countless succession of years, and the flight of the seasons. I will not wholly die!_"

 

Joonathan came up to me as I read, and looked over my shoulder with a frown, so stern for a moment that I was upset, and stopped reading, looking up from the page.

 

After a moment, sounding very much ashamed, he spoke. "I did not realize you had learned Latin," he said.

 

I looked back at the page, not understanding, and saw the words just above my finger, the place where I had stopped.

_Non omnis moriar!_ they read. I did not know, then, what they meant.

 

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